“I think the report is wrong really, said Emma Davis, 32. “There’s some poor people and there are some people doing really well. I’ve lived here 22 years and it's quite a lot better.”

“I mean it was rougher, there was a lot of drugs and stuff around here, but it's got a lot better, it's much quieter now.”

Judith Morkot, 31, who owns a hair salon on the estate and has lived in Lansbury for 14 years, said: “It was horrible at first. When I moved here I wouldn’t walk down the stretch because you used to have your gangs drinking, sort of sitting outside the shop, especially in the summer. I wouldn’t have walked then, but it’s totally different from what it was 14 years ago.”

Areas are measured across eight separate criteria in the Welsh Government’s Index of Deprivation, including income, employment, health, education, access to services, community safety, housing and the environment.

“The Stretch” is a long pathway that runs down the middle of Lansbury Park, a sea of almost identical 750 brown brick and grey cement homes.

It is dotted with small shops that residents frequently walk in and out of, waving to their neighbours as they pop in to grab a prescription or get their hair done. A peek over the fences and you see clothes drying on the line, a couple of walls dotted with basketball hoops.

Mothers take their babies down the stretch in their prams, and there’s a playground at the end. The area is clean and litter-free, with the only bit of odd graffiti seen in a couple of stray spray-painted initials on a trash can or brick wall.

Valerie Parry, 66, whose lived in Lansbury for 20 years, said: “I would never walk here before but now it’s cleaned up a heck of a lot, there’s not so much vandalism. Everything’s fine here.”

Gloria Park, 75, who used to be a warden of the estate and now lives in nearby Porset Park said: “It’s the same as every other area. I haven’t heard of any problems being up here in ages. It’s quiet.”

“I wouldn’t call it socially deprived, I wouldn’t call it that. I love the people here.”

“People think because its Lansbury Park its fair game to run it down,” said Dave Guru, 56, who has worked in the Lansbury pharmacy for 27 years. “It’s a good community, but historically it has always been said it’s run down. Obviously we had problems but in the past few years most of them seem to be ironed out.”

“There’s a few minority people ruining it for the others. But, like with most places, there’s always going to be a small minority that’s in the press and it brings the place down.”

Ms Morkot said: “There might be a minority that’s maybe slightly deprived, but I think you only get out of life what you’re willing to put into it. I think that could change if they were willing to do things to change it, but I don’t feel like we’re deprived.”

The new data shows seven of the 10 most deprived areas in 2011 remained in the most deprived 10 in 2014, including St James 1 and Twyn Carno 1 in Caerphilly, Rhyl West 1 and 2, Tylorstown 1, and Caerau 1 near Maesteg.

One man, who asked to remain anonymous, said he believed the report accurately reflected the Lansbury Park estate and he said a minority of residents was to blame.

“There’s five percent of people here who are not nice people,” he said.

But every resident was quick to point out that the rest of the community was tight-knit and always willing to lend a helping hand to a fellow neighbour in need.

“The community is friendly, it is a community of its own,” said Ms Morkot. “A woman died a few months ago and the husband couldn’t afford the funeral so they done this massive fundraiser and all the locals done it. They rallied round and they raised the money for him to bury his wife. You don’t always get that in some communities.”

“If someone moves in and they don’t have any furniture, furniture will start appearing,” said the man who requested to remain unnamed.

Some residents, like Christine Gough, 42, and Ms Davis, said the estate could improve on finding more ways to occupy the children in the community.

Few people frequent the new community centre outside the estate. And the old community centre, which Ms Lee said used to be bustling with activity, now stands padlocked and dilapidated, its brick exterior covered in moss and the porch light smashed, the bulb missing.

But, when asked, most residents said they couldn’t think of anything to change, that they were happy with Lansbury just the way it is.

Said Ms Morkot: “I can’t see, if you change anything, how it would make anything better, because I think it’s good anyway.”